Thirteen high school football players were left permanently disabled as a result of a football-related brain injury in 2011, the most ever recorded in one year, according to the latest annual report from the University of North Carolina’s National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research.
To combat the rise in such injuries, the study authors suggest having coaches promote increased awareness, emphasize the need to eliminate helmet-to-helmet contact, and teach safer tackling techniques.
But the authors didn’t believe that increased concussion awareness led to the all-time high in catastrophic brain injuries, noting that the center’s definition of catastrophic injuries hadn’t changed since it first started reporting on them in 1977.
